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Configuring basic IPv6 settings
Overview
IPv6, also called IP next generation (IPng), was designed by the IETF as the successor to IPv4. One
significant difference between IPv6 and IPv4 is that IPv6 increases the IP address size from 32 bits
to 128 bits.
IPv6 features
Simplified header format
IPv6 removes several IPv4 header fields or moves them to the IPv6 extension headers to reduce the
length of the basic IPv6 packet header. The basic IPv6 packet header has a fixed length of 40 bytes
to simplify IPv6 packet handling and improve forwarding efficiency. Although the IPv6 address size is
four times the IPv4 address size, the basic IPv6 packet header size is only twice the size of the
option-less IPv4 packet header.
Figure 80 IPv4 packet header format and basic IPv6 packet header format
Larger address space
IPv6 can provide 3.4 x 10
38
addresses to meet the requirements of hierarchical address assignment
for both public and private networks.
Hierarchical address structure
IPv6 uses a hierarchical address structure to speed up route lookup and reduce the IPv6 routing
table size through route aggregation.
Address autoconfiguration
To simplify host configuration, IPv6 supports stateful and stateless address autoconfiguration.
• Stateful address autoconfiguration enables a host to acquire an IPv6 address and other
configuration information from a server (for example, a DHCPv6 server). For more information
about DHCPv6 server, see "Configuring the DHCPv6 server."
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